Day 21: CBT & Silver Cloud

Different style of blog post today, we’re going to try and shift this into a higher quality collection of works- start early and the rest should follow.

Despite a rough time getting to sleep last night I believe I finally drifted off to sleep at around half one in the morning and slept through until I was awoken rather untimely at about half nine. One of my friends had left their keys at my house and asked whether I could hand them the set at a nearby bus stop, a ”Comedy of errors” they called it, and as groggy as I can be sometimes in the morning… I had to agree.

It was pretty funny despite the short jog in the ‘bitterly cold’ rain.

It didn’t discourage my morning and I readily set about calling up my academic advisers, but as you would expect it went straight through to voicemail- it never rains, it only pours it seems. It resulted in me having to take down their E-mail and I’ll be sending them my correspondence later in the day.

After that rather annoying debacle with an answering machine I began to make a rather unethical breakfast of cheese on crackers (I always was weak when it came to Stilton and brie) and since it’s coming up to Christmas I’ve made sure that the house is stocked with all kinds of seasonal goodies. Unethical… but tasty.

Whilst eating I decided to look into the idea of beginning to learn another language, I haven’t quite decided as to whether I should learn German, Japanese or both so we’ll start with the Deutsche. I seem to have found an online introductory course endorsed by the ”Open University” that will serve as a first step into the language.

As for the Japanese, there are a number of resources I know of, but struggle to recount what they are, though all is not lost and I can refer to the man below.

Chris: Abroad in Japan- Engrish background

I know for a fact that this, amazingly witty, man has a number of videos addressing the issues around picking up what is, arguably, one of the hardest languages to learn on the planet.

Of course there’s always the possibility that I could learn both, I’ve never tried my hand at either, so I can’t say that I’d be fully equipped to study both at the same time, along with quite a few other things. I’ll have to see how I fair with the harder of the two, is my thinking, before deciding whether I feel confident taking on the second.

So, on my list of five things, there’s only two other things that need attending to and those are krav maga and piano. Admittedly I know about krav maga, I know there’s a group within my vicinity and I’ve had a little bit of contact with them in the past. Piano however is a completely different kettle of fish! I’ve barely looked into it and if it is a class I have to pay for, I have no idea as to how much it will be.

So, finally here’s the long-winded part.

The orginisation that’s apparently going to help me with my depression is the Silver Cloud group. They believe that the best way to combat my depression and anger issues seems to be through C.B.T (Cognitive Behavioral Therapy) which focuses on changing the way I think and act in order to combat depression, send it into recession and keep it at bay.

So the way they believe this course is best administered is in seven steps, each of which should take me around a week to complete. So I did have a look today, even though in reality that translates to a small quiz and a thirty second video… but it is only Monday.

It is to be expected that should I follow, take in and understand every part of the course that, at the very least, I should start to feel a little better about myself and my situation so we’ll see where that goes.

As for today that sounds like all, and I think that with eating, sleeping, bathing and activities all taken into consideration I can brand this day as a success.